August 12, 2011

WELCOME TO FRIGHT NIGHT: Of Vampires & Colin Farrell

Fans of the original 1985 version of Fright Night can take some solace from the fact that virtually everyone involved with the remake, which opens on August 19th, holds a certain reverence to the original, which has translated into a genuine passion for the project and a desire to create something genuinely special. The plot, of course, deals with teenager Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) who discovers that his next door neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Colin Farrell), is a vampire and has to do whatever he can to stop him.. or quite literally die trying. "The challenge with every vampire movie - and there have been a lot throughout Hollywood's history - is how do you do something original and put a distinctive sin on a subject that's been around for centuries in fiction?" asks producer Michael De Luca, who admits he was surprised when Marti Noxon's agent suggested her. "We thought, 'Great, but she's already done the vampire thing with Buffy, so she probably wouldn't be interested.' Happily she ended up being very interested. Marti came in and pitched us basically the story that we're shooting. She had a very fully developed pitch." Adds executive producer Michael Gaeta, "I think that when audiences see the product of Marti's imagination, they'll find a lot of scary dark things, but also beautiful and wonderful things, too. She had a really great fix on exactly what the tone of the script should be and the importance of the relationships among the characters. She gave the script that extra emotional depth that she's so god at dramatizing. It was really a lot of fun all the way through her interpretation of Fright Night." One thing that needed to be retained from the original, everyone felt, was the balance between horror and humor. Offers director Craig Gillespie, "There are reall horrific moments that are very scary, and also very human moments. It wasn't just a straight genre film. Marti managed to balance thriller, humor and horror."

NO SPARKLES HERE!Unlike, say, the vampires of The Twilight Saga, Jerry Dandridge is not a lovesick, conflicted being. Indeed, he's been compared to a great white shark - the perfect eating machine. Says Noxon, "At a time when vampires are part of the mainstream for moviegoers and TV watchers, some of the shock value and mystery surrounding vampire practices is gone. There's a sort of romantic vampire that's common in the culture right now. We went away from that. We are very true to the spirit of the original film." Adds Farrell, "There are none of those romantic leanings. This vampire is just a killer. He's over four hundred years old. He's probably a little bit bored when we find him, but he feeds. He just feeds. He exists." As to his exposure to the original, he notes, "I was eleven or twelve years old the first time I saw Fright Night. I dont' want to say it's sacrosanct, but in a way it is and it's kind of perfect in its own form. So I was frustrated when I read Marti's script, because it was so good I really wanted to do it. Just like the original, it seemed to straddle the line between horror a kind of sweet tongue-in-cheek comedy." Of Farrell's casting, Gillespie noted, "I was so excited that we could get him. I couldn't think of anyone more perfect. As written, Jerry's an incredibly charismatic personality, but there is a sinister aspect to him, too. I thought Colin would embody that perfectly." "When I met Craig," says the actor, "he was enthusiastic and had a very clear idea of how he wanted to tell this story. I wanted to say it was a no-brainer for me to want to be in his film. It really was a pretty easy decision."